Congratulations on your work, is a great statistical analysis. Anyway I would like to raise some questions and suggestions:
Do you consider that speed dating is a mating system with enough ecological validity?
Online dating and speed dating are a new line of studies, which is a recent, highly artificial cultural construct. True that speed dating method has increased ecological validity compared to traditional self-report methods (and superior identification of variables compared to archival methods like data-mining printed personal ads), but its ecological validity is limited compared to other mating leks like online dating and mating field research, since speed dating manipulates the normal parameters of courtship (i.e. selective interactions), sufficiently to ‘confuse’ our perceptions.
A lot of inconsistencies in a lot of speed dating findings could be due in part to the variation in experimental context and potential lack of ecological validity. I always suggest work with data of other kind of studies extracted from more natural mating leks, which attempts to overcome these limitations in an ecologically-valid experimental paradigm: online dating research, and mainly field courtship research.
You should work with online dating because it provides an ecologically valid or true-to-life context for examining the risks, uncertainties and rewards of initiating real relationships with real people at an unprecedented scale. I think the confusion happens because speed-dating precludes selective interactions which would normally limit spurious signals of interest, keeping them to a minimum (ie. that courtship interactions imply genuine interest is generally a justified assumption in other contexts). But, in the case of speed-dating, the lack of selective interactions ensures a high incidence of spurious signalling, which is (apparently) difficult to falsify.
Moreover speed-dating is such an unconventional courtship practice (ie. everyone meets everyone else), the non rotating sex (traditionally females) may be confusing friendly/courteous body language for genuine signals of interest (since such signals DO tend to imply interest in other settings – but not necessarily in a speed dating context, where these behaviors are procedurally manipulated). It could result in overconfidence (i.e. assuming a genuine level of interest from everyone who sits down with you and ‘smiles’, etc.), and thus higher selectivity, for the non-rotating sex (again, traditionally females). It is simple to test this hypothesis, but I won’t be holding my breath.
While online dating offers a platform to obtain high size sample values from a naturalistic setting that should confer high external reliability. While actual patterns of communication in a real online dating system are similar to those occurring in real life. In speed dating everyone meets everyone else. A sequential aspiration-level model occurs for mate choice within human mating leks as online dating and field dating. First an individual assesses a sexual prospect’s trait values in sequence, from those most easily perceived through those that take longest to judge. Individuals assign an aspiration level to each of four traits (visual scanning, conversation, dating, exclusive dating, marriage), and pursue further courtship only with prospects who exceed each successive aspiration level. These aspiration-level ‘hurdles’ can be set at different heights depending on the individual’s sexual strategy and mating goals, and can be set relative to one’s own trait values, or relative to a population percentile value.
It might be adaptive to filter prospects through a series of aspiration levels, using physical appearance to decide whom to talk to, conversation to decide whom to form a short-term relationship with, and psychological compatibility to decide whom to form a long-term relationship with. In this sequential aspiration model, mate choice sets up a series of hurdles, and the courting individual tries to jump over them.
Congratulations on your work, is a great statistical analysis. Anyway I would like to raise some questions and suggestions:
Do you consider that speed dating is a mating system with enough ecological validity?
Online dating and speed dating are a new line of studies, which is a recent, highly artificial cultural construct. True that speed dating method has increased ecological validity compared to traditional self-report methods (and superior identification of variables compared to archival methods like data-mining printed personal ads), but its ecological validity is limited compared to other mating leks like online dating and mating field research, since speed dating manipulates the normal parameters of courtship (i.e. selective interactions), sufficiently to ‘confuse’ our perceptions.
A lot of inconsistencies in a lot of speed dating findings could be due in part to the variation in experimental context and potential lack of ecological validity. I always suggest work with data of other kind of studies extracted from more natural mating leks, which attempts to overcome these limitations in an ecologically-valid experimental paradigm: online dating research, and mainly field courtship research.
You should work with online dating because it provides an ecologically valid or true-to-life context for examining the risks, uncertainties and rewards of initiating real relationships with real people at an unprecedented scale. I think the confusion happens because speed-dating precludes selective interactions which would normally limit spurious signals of interest, keeping them to a minimum (ie. that courtship interactions imply genuine interest is generally a justified assumption in other contexts). But, in the case of speed-dating, the lack of selective interactions ensures a high incidence of spurious signalling, which is (apparently) difficult to falsify.
Moreover speed-dating is such an unconventional courtship practice (ie. everyone meets everyone else), the non rotating sex (traditionally females) may be confusing friendly/courteous body language for genuine signals of interest (since such signals DO tend to imply interest in other settings – but not necessarily in a speed dating context, where these behaviors are procedurally manipulated). It could result in overconfidence (i.e. assuming a genuine level of interest from everyone who sits down with you and ‘smiles’, etc.), and thus higher selectivity, for the non-rotating sex (again, traditionally females). It is simple to test this hypothesis, but I won’t be holding my breath.
While online dating offers a platform to obtain high size sample values from a naturalistic setting that should confer high external reliability. While actual patterns of communication in a real online dating system are similar to those occurring in real life. In speed dating everyone meets everyone else. A sequential aspiration-level model occurs for mate choice within human mating leks as online dating and field dating. First an individual assesses a sexual prospect’s trait values in sequence, from those most easily perceived through those that take longest to judge. Individuals assign an aspiration level to each of four traits (visual scanning, conversation, dating, exclusive dating, marriage), and pursue further courtship only with prospects who exceed each successive aspiration level. These aspiration-level ‘hurdles’ can be set at different heights depending on the individual’s sexual strategy and mating goals, and can be set relative to one’s own trait values, or relative to a population percentile value.
It might be adaptive to filter prospects through a series of aspiration levels, using physical appearance to decide whom to talk to, conversation to decide whom to form a short-term relationship with, and psychological compatibility to decide whom to form a long-term relationship with. In this sequential aspiration model, mate choice sets up a series of hurdles, and the courting individual tries to jump over them.